Red Wings’ Losses to Montreal Suggest Bigger Issue

The Detroit Red Wings’ home-and-home series against the Montreal Canadians began with optimism and ended with discouragement about where this team is at.

Montreal pinned a 5-1 triumph against the Red Wings to complete a two-game sweep in the home-and-home series. The two wins moved the Canadiens ahead of Detroit. The Red Wings are now 15th in the Eastern Conference and 27th in the 32-team NHL.

Detroit is six points out of the last wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference and four points ahead of the teams with the worst records in the league.

Going into this series, Detroit had won three out of four. They had scored 16 goals in those three wins.

On Friday, the Red Wings allowed Montreal to come-from-behind to win 4-3. Going into Saturday’s game, Montreal had only won once after giving up the first goal. The Red Wings scored the first goal when Joe Veleno scored for the third time in three games.

But Montreal scored the next five goals against Detroit goalie Alex Lyon who has given up nine goals on 43 shots in two games since returning from injury.

“First period we had a pretty good start,” Coach Derek Lalonde told FanDuel Sports Network. “We had the goal, but we had some zone time, we had a power play, we had some looks. Let it get away from us a little bit at the end of the first, but I thought we were fine going into the second. And just too much zone time. We only gave up a couple chances in the second, I think they only had six shots, but they built momentum off that zone time. We were unable to get a stop and it just got away from us unfortunately tonight.”

Blanked on PP

Detroit’s power play troubles continue. The Red Wings were 0-for-4, while Montreal scored one goal on the power play.com

“Just bad on our rotations,” Lalonde said. “We’re not getting shots, not getting looks. We did hit the post there on the first power play, but we need it. Our margin of error is very thin. If we’re not getting quality play on our special teams it puts so much more on all of us and that’s been the case. One more on our penalty kill tonight and 0-for on the power play. It’s something we have to rectify.”

The Red Wings are already playing without defenseman Simon Edvinsson and Ben Chiarot didn’t play in the third period. The only information that Lalonde had was that Chiarot had an upper body injury. Coming into Saturday’s game, Chiarot was plus-9 over the previous four games.

Detroit plays one more game before the Christmas break: the St. Louis Blues will be at Little Caesars Arena Monday for a 7 p.m. game.  The Blues are four points out of a playoff spot in the Western Conference.